Channel Frederator Blog

The Women in Animation event “So You Want To Make A Short” was a great time.

The event was held at Dreamworks, which has a beautiful campus.

This pond is actually part of the Dreamworks campus. There is incredible natural beauty everywhere you look, from the vines to the fish in the ponds.

My friends Phil and Deepa gave us a quick tour early in the day. There are fountains everywhere, and the whole environment has a very educational, almost college like quality.

After the tour, we had quite a bit of time to kill before the event, so we killed some time in Burbank. When we returned, Rachel Illowsky, Lisa Illowsky and I accidentally crashed a going away party for a storyboard artist.

Rachel, Po, and Lisa made fast friends. The wine was great and the artists we kind enough to let us keep drinking even after we realized we were in the wrong place.

The event itself was great, though it strayed a bit from the topic of short films. With many studios now using short films in place of pilots for series, the conversation quickly turned to series and what various studios are looking for.

Some of the tips from the panel included:

· You should know your characters.
· You should know their world.
· You should know a bit about the studio you are pitching to and what shows or shorts they have recently put out. Only pitch shorts or shows to places where they would fit under the umbrella of their usual content. For example, don’t pitch Rob Zombie type stuff (cool as it may be) to the Disney Channel.
· No one knows anything. One studio you pitch to may give you notes that won’t work for some other studio, or maybe won’t work for your pitch at all.
· Be prepared for some odd notes. “It’s too funny”, “We’re looking for the next Spongebob”, and “Would it work with a talking dog?” are just some of the notes you may hear while pitching.

They entire discussion was recorded and should be available as a podcast soon via the Women in Animation site. You can also become a member of the Women in Animation organization.

The evening was a good time, and I look forward to going to more of their events.

-Floyd Bishop